The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
“I think we’re being sarcastic.” Alevy added, “All right, we can pursue this along separate lines for a while. All I ask of you is to be careful what you tell the Pentagon, and I’ll do the same with Langley.”
“Why?”
“You know why. This thing is so big they’ll try to run it from there. Then State and the White House will get involved, and we’ll be getting micromanagement from one of those bozos in the basement of the White House. We’re the ones who risk our lives out here, Sam.”
Hollis didn’t reply.
Alevy added, “You risked your life once in a war that had enough bombing limitation rules to make sure you didn’t hurt anyone but yourself. Are you still pissed about that? Would you like to even the score with Washington on that? Do you want to maybe bring a few fliers home? You know they’re out there, Sam. I know it too.”
Hollis stared Alevy in the eye and said softly, “I’ll listen to reason and logic, Seth. But don’t you ever—ever try to manipulate me with that argument. Stay out of my past. I’ll deal with that.”
Alevy maintained eye contact, then nodded and turned away. “Okay. Cheap shot.”
Hollis finished his beer.
Alevy stood and went to the bar, coming back with two more drinks. He handed Hollis a beer. Alevy said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about Ace. I don’t know if he rings. Do you?”
Hollis recognized the format: Prove to me your man is not a double. “He’s always had the goods,” Hollis reminded him.
Alevy looked at Hollis. “Seems so. Everything he’s given you has checked out with my people and yours. Yet…”
Hollis stared down at Alevy’s brightly polished handmade broughams. Italian-tailored blue silk suit. Custom shirt and Liberty tie. Seth Alevy spent a good deal of money on good clothing. And yet someone who knew Alevy in the States said he dressed better in Moscow than in Washington. Hollis suspected that the sartorial splendor was just Alevy’s way of annoying the Russians. Alevy, to the best of Hollis’ knowledge, was the only man who ever showed up at the Bolshoi in a tuxedo. In fact, Hollis was convinced that Alevy owned the only tuxedo in all of Russia.
Alevy finished his second scotch. “Ace’s stuff is good, but he may be setting us up for a nasty sting. You might have handed him the means if you mentioned Borodino.”
“There’s always that possibility.” Hollis regarded the four FSPs. The one with the Toto T-shirt threw a gutter ball and uttered an obscenity. She pulled the front of her T-shirt up and wiped the perspiration from her face, baring her midriff in the process. “Hard fuzzy-belly.”
“What?” Alevy looked. “Oh.”
“What do you do for sex now, Seth?”
“That’s a rather personal question.”
“No, it’s a professional question.”
“Well… I don’t have to remind you, as our Marines have to be reminded daily, that the local devitsas are off-limits. And so, theoretically, are the wives of our coworkers.”
“Theoretically.”
“There are,” Alevy said, ignoring this, “at this moment exactly thirty-two single women in the embassy, and perhaps twenty or more of them have already formed liaisons.”
“Have they? How do you know?”
“I keep a dossier on everyone here. Isn’t that disgusting?”
“No comment.”
“As for the women in other Western embassies, they are off-limits to intelligence types such as us. For you and I the policy is to date only single American women.” Alevy added, “You could hang around the hard-currency bars and find an unattached American tourist.”
“Have you done that?”
“Maybe.” Alevy looked at Hollis. “I assume your wife is not returning. However, until you get a divorce, you have to play by the rules.” Alevy smiled and patted Hollis’ arm, a rare display of intimacy. “You don’t know how to be a bachelor anyway. You were married too long.”
Hollis didn’t respond.
“Did you have someone special in mind?” Alevy asked.
“No, just checking the rules.”
Alevy regarded Hollis for some time, then asked, “Did something happen between you and Lisa? That’s a professional question.”
“Then look in your dossier.”
“Well,” Alevy said in a cooler tone, “I want you to think now about Ace.”
“I have. So I had him meet me in Dzerzhinsky Square. And some K-goons came along, and Ace went pale. Hard to fake skin color.”
Alevy shrugged. “Heard of a similar situation where a guy did fake it with some sort of nitrate substance. Turned him ashen. But Dzerzhinsky Square was an inspired idea. Not bad for a military guy. A little risky though.”
Hollis sipped his beer.
Alevy said, “Regarding Ace, if you cut him loose, we’re ahead of the game whether he’s real or not. If you stay with him, you may find out what he’s up to. But what he’s up to may be murder, and it may be too late.”
“Actually there’s been a new development.”
“What?”
“He wants to head West.”
“Does he?”
“So he says.”
Alevy thought a moment. “Then maybe what he wants is to find out how we get people out of here.”
“Maybe. Maybe he just really wants to defect.” Hollis cradled the beer bottle in his hands and watched the condensation drip. Alevy had a weak spot in his professional makeup: He personally didn’t like most Russians. Not liking the Soviet regime was a job qualification. But Alevy was unable to concede that anyone who had been shaped by the regime was capable of anything but treachery and vileness. Perhaps he was right. Certainly General Surikov was a good example of the New Soviet Man. “I don’t intend to cut him loose or to turn him over to you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I’m not suggesting that. He apparently wants to deal with a brother Air Force officer. I couldn’t run him. What’s he offering for the ticket West? The scoop on Borodino?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you planted that in his head. Maybe he’ll make up a crock of shit just to get out of here.”
“We’ll soon know.”
“Are you meeting with him in person again?”
“Yes.” Hollis put his beer bottle on the floor and wiped his hands on his trousers. “But I don’t want company.”
“I want to talk to this joker myself.”
Hollis said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for the CIA station chief, the most important man in Western intelligence in the Soviet Union, to run around Moscow trying to rendezvous with Russian informers. Do you?”
“Let me worry about my job description.”
“Sure.” Hollis considered what little else he knew about Alevy. In Langley, he’d turned out to be a genius at political analysis, and his prophesies regarding Soviet intentions, particularly Gorbachev’s glasnost, had been so accurate that it seemed, some said, he had a friend in the Politboro. Alevy had arrived in Moscow about three years before as third deputy to the CIA station chief. Now he was the station chief. He was not allowed to leave the embassy compound without at least two security men and one cyanide pill. Hollis knew he left without the former but was sure he never left without the latter.
Alevy’s official job with the diplomatic mission was that of political affairs officer, but the cover was thin, as it usually was with this sort of thing. The KGB knew who he was, and so did most of the senior American staff. “Maybe that is Ace’s scam,” Hollis said baitingly. “To draw you out so they can kill you.”
“Even they don’t kill senior American diplomats.”
“In your case they’d make an exception. Anyway, you’re not a diplomat.”
“I am. I have a diplomatic passport. I go to all the receptions and talk like a diplomatic dork.”
Hollis stood. “What were you doing in Sadovniki Friday night?”
Alevy stood also. “A Sukkot party. The harvest festival. Sort of like Thanksgiving.”
Hollis nodded. He had
heard that Alevy once lived some months in the Russian Jewish community of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach section. Thus he spoke his Russian with a Moscow-Leningrad accent and was perhaps the only man in the embassy who could actually pass for a Soviet citizen under close scrutiny. Hollis imagined that Alevy had also heard some firsthand accounts of religious persecution from his friends in Brighton Beach, and had also been given quite a few names to contact in Moscow, thus arriving in Moscow with assets no one else had.
Alevy asked, “Do you know anything about Judaism?”
“I know the Soviets aren’t too keen on it. I know that religious observances can attract the K-goons. I know the ambassador would not like you annoying our host government.”
“Fuck his excellency.” Alevy added, “Jews are politically unreliable here, so you can fraternize with them.”
Hollis considered the irony in this. American Jews were once thought politically unreliable by the CIA. Now Alevy was the CIA Moscow station chief partly because he was a Jew. Times change.
As though Alevy had read Hollis’ mind, Alevy said, “Jewish dissidents are our potential fifth column here, Sam. We should build more bridges to that community.”
“Should we?” But beyond all that, Hollis thought, Alevy was playing a dangerous game, dangerous because it had become a personal game with no official backing or backup. Someday Seth Alevy would find himself alone with his cyanide pill. Hollis found himself saying something he’d thought about in Pavel’s izba. “Those people have enough problems, Seth. They don’t need you hanging around making things worse.”
“Bullshit. Things get worse for Jews only when they try to accommodate their persecutors.”
“Maybe. Look, I don’t talk politics or religion—only sex and football. I’m just telling you as a colleague, and yes, you idiot, even as your friend, that the KGB will forgive your spying, but not your Judaism. We need you here, especially now, until this new thing is settled.”
Alevy did not acknowledge Hollis’ words at all, but asked, “So, where and when are you meeting Ace?”
Hollis knew he couldn’t very well refuse to answer. “Gogol’s grave. Next Sunday. Three P.M. Give or take a few hours.”
“Where is Gogol’s grave these days?”
“Beats me.”
As Alevy and Hollis walked toward the exit, Hollis noticed that the Marines, the three secretaries, and the nurse had joined forces and retired to the lounge. The Horgans must have left without his noticing. The lanes were empty and quiet. And so were the game rooms and the swimming pool and all the other activity centers in the compound except the bars. There was a sort of mass lethargy that gripped this place, especially with the onset of winter. Hollis had never seen this kind of aimlessness and listlessness in any other American embassy. He didn’t know what a behavioral psychologist would make of this maze and its white rats, but Hollis’ theory was that the people inside the walls had somehow absorbed the malaise of the people outside the walls.
Hollis stared at the exit sign above the elevator and a word came to mind: bezizkhodnost. Exitlessness; dead end; futility; hopelessness; going nowhere—all contained within that one expressive word that the Russian people used but Pravda never printed. “Bezizkhodnost.”
Alevy looked at him and seemed to understand. “That’s what’s left when you subtract God from man.”
“But I see it here too. I think it’s catching.”
“Maybe,” Alevy said, “but not for us. We know what we’re about, don’t we, Sam?”
“Indeed we do.”
“Fuck the Reds,” Alevy said.
“Each and every day,” Hollis replied, but at the same time thinking that was no longer enough. Thinking that this time he had a chance to do something positive, to put Haiphong harbor to rest in his own mind, and to put the whole MIA question to rest for his country.
The two elevators came simultaneously. Hollis got in one, and Alevy the other.
16
Lisa Rhodes picked up the telephone in her office, dialed Hollis’ office, then before it rang, hung up. “Damn him.” She dialed Alevy’s office, and his secretary put her through. Alevy said, “Hello, Li—”
“Did you tell Sam Hollis to stay away from me?”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No. But to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get invol—”
“Don’t fuck around with my life, Seth.”
“Just calm down.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Look, if he’s done a disappearing act on you… Anyway, I still love you. Why don’t we talk—”
“We talked.”
“I should really be angry. What happened out there in that village?”
“It’s in my report.”
“Lisa—”
“I have to go. Bye, Seth.” She hung up. “Damn men.”
Lisa looked at her watch, saw it was five P.M., and poured herself a bourbon. She pulled a press release toward her and worked on it without knowing what she was writing.
A few minutes later Kay Hoffman walked in and took her favorite seat on the hot-air register. “Ah. You ever try this?”
Lisa didn’t reply and went back to the press release.
Kay Hoffman picked up a just-arrived copy of the previous day’s Washington Post and scanned it, then glanced at Lisa. “You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Monthly blues?”
“No.” Lisa struck out a line of the typed copy. She reflected on her job in the United States Information Service. She wrote news releases, but she was also the resident Russophile, responsible for cultural affairs. She arranged for Soviet cultural missions to tour the States. They sent the Bolshoi, and the U.S. sent Van Halen.
Lisa Rhodes loved Russian poetry in its original language, and Pasternak moved her deeply. She was an expert on icons, enjoyed Russian ballet, traditional Russian cooking, and folk art. She thought she understood the mysticism in the Russian soul—the unsevered link between the Russian race, the land, and the Orthodox church. And since Yablonya, she thought she felt her own Russianness more.
She sometimes thought of herself as a thin rope bridge between two iron superstructures. But if the Americans and Soviets were determined not to understand each other, that was their problem. One day they’d blow themselves and the rest of the earth into oblivion. Then the two cultures would be similar.
She made a few more notes on her press release. She usually wrote two releases—one for America, one in Russian for the Soviet news service, Tass. Tass used what they wanted without attribution. In that respect, at least, the Soviet and American press were alike. She looked up at Kay. “Do I have to be nice to Van Halen or to the audience?”
Kay glanced up from her newspaper. “Oh… are you still working on that? That has to go out today. Just sound up.”
“Where do you get your orders from?”
“I don’t get orders, Lisa. Only direction.”
“From where?”
“High up.”
“Someday I’m going to write what I want. What I really saw here.”
“Some day you can. But today you write what you’re told.”
“That’s what some apparatchik is being told at the Tass office tonight.”
“Maybe. But we won’t shoot you if you don’t do what we say. So don’t tell me we are no different from them.”
“No, I meant… there’s more to the story. The whole idea of the Russian youth enthralled by Western pop culture. Every kid there was dressed in blue jeans. They were shouting in English, ‘Super,’ ‘Beautiful, baby.’ It was…” She thought a moment. “It was surreal is what it was. But was it revolution?”
Kay Hoffman stared at her awhile, then said, “If it was, that is not what you will write about.”
Lisa went back to her press release.
Kay went back to her newspaper.
Lisa thought, But what was
it? What is going on here? Questions such as that, however, were not within the purview of the USIS. Working for the USIS was like working for the Ministry of Truth; when the party line changed, you changed with it.
At the moment, Soviet-American relations were on the verge of a breakthrough. Thus all this cultural activity was a precursor to the diplomatic activity. Her orders—her directions—were to be positive, upbeat. Think peace.
Those had been her orders some years back, before Nicholas Daniloff, an American correspondent, had been arrested by the KGB on a trumped-up spy charge. Then new orders came down: cancel all cultural exchanges. And so it went, in an Orwellian about-face, in mid-sentence, the word processors ceased churning out puff pieces and began issuing terse sentences of canceled events. But for the moment, puff was required. Though now there was the Fisher affair. She said to Kay Hoffman, “I don’t appreciate you writing that press release about Fisher’s death and you putting my name on it.”
Kay shrugged. “Sorry. Orders.” She asked, “What did happen to that Fisher boy?”
“Exactly what you said in my press release.”
“I guess I deserved that.”
“Maybe I should resign over that.”
Kay stayed silent, then said, “I don’t think you need bother.”
“Meaning what?”
“Forget it.”
Lisa finished her cigarette and lit another. Her tour of duty was four years. She had less than two to go. As a Foreign Service Officer, she was assigned overseas duty somewhat as a military officer was. In fact, her rank of FSO-6 was roughly equivalent to an Army captain. Her title was Deputy Public Affairs Officer. Kay Hoffman was the PAO. They had six FSPs—five women and one man—working for them. It was all very exciting, very boring; very easy, very trying.
Kay looked up from her newspaper. “Are you all right?”
“No one is all right here,” Lisa replied. “This is what State calls a hardship tour. Do you think the Soviet government is insulted by that?”
Kay smiled grimly. “They don’t give a damn. This whole fucking country is on a lifetime hardship tour, and the government put them there.” Kay added, “It helps if you have a lover.”
“Why?”
“You know why. This thing is so big they’ll try to run it from there. Then State and the White House will get involved, and we’ll be getting micromanagement from one of those bozos in the basement of the White House. We’re the ones who risk our lives out here, Sam.”
Hollis didn’t reply.
Alevy added, “You risked your life once in a war that had enough bombing limitation rules to make sure you didn’t hurt anyone but yourself. Are you still pissed about that? Would you like to even the score with Washington on that? Do you want to maybe bring a few fliers home? You know they’re out there, Sam. I know it too.”
Hollis stared Alevy in the eye and said softly, “I’ll listen to reason and logic, Seth. But don’t you ever—ever try to manipulate me with that argument. Stay out of my past. I’ll deal with that.”
Alevy maintained eye contact, then nodded and turned away. “Okay. Cheap shot.”
Hollis finished his beer.
Alevy stood and went to the bar, coming back with two more drinks. He handed Hollis a beer. Alevy said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about Ace. I don’t know if he rings. Do you?”
Hollis recognized the format: Prove to me your man is not a double. “He’s always had the goods,” Hollis reminded him.
Alevy looked at Hollis. “Seems so. Everything he’s given you has checked out with my people and yours. Yet…”
Hollis stared down at Alevy’s brightly polished handmade broughams. Italian-tailored blue silk suit. Custom shirt and Liberty tie. Seth Alevy spent a good deal of money on good clothing. And yet someone who knew Alevy in the States said he dressed better in Moscow than in Washington. Hollis suspected that the sartorial splendor was just Alevy’s way of annoying the Russians. Alevy, to the best of Hollis’ knowledge, was the only man who ever showed up at the Bolshoi in a tuxedo. In fact, Hollis was convinced that Alevy owned the only tuxedo in all of Russia.
Alevy finished his second scotch. “Ace’s stuff is good, but he may be setting us up for a nasty sting. You might have handed him the means if you mentioned Borodino.”
“There’s always that possibility.” Hollis regarded the four FSPs. The one with the Toto T-shirt threw a gutter ball and uttered an obscenity. She pulled the front of her T-shirt up and wiped the perspiration from her face, baring her midriff in the process. “Hard fuzzy-belly.”
“What?” Alevy looked. “Oh.”
“What do you do for sex now, Seth?”
“That’s a rather personal question.”
“No, it’s a professional question.”
“Well… I don’t have to remind you, as our Marines have to be reminded daily, that the local devitsas are off-limits. And so, theoretically, are the wives of our coworkers.”
“Theoretically.”
“There are,” Alevy said, ignoring this, “at this moment exactly thirty-two single women in the embassy, and perhaps twenty or more of them have already formed liaisons.”
“Have they? How do you know?”
“I keep a dossier on everyone here. Isn’t that disgusting?”
“No comment.”
“As for the women in other Western embassies, they are off-limits to intelligence types such as us. For you and I the policy is to date only single American women.” Alevy added, “You could hang around the hard-currency bars and find an unattached American tourist.”
“Have you done that?”
“Maybe.” Alevy looked at Hollis. “I assume your wife is not returning. However, until you get a divorce, you have to play by the rules.” Alevy smiled and patted Hollis’ arm, a rare display of intimacy. “You don’t know how to be a bachelor anyway. You were married too long.”
Hollis didn’t respond.
“Did you have someone special in mind?” Alevy asked.
“No, just checking the rules.”
Alevy regarded Hollis for some time, then asked, “Did something happen between you and Lisa? That’s a professional question.”
“Then look in your dossier.”
“Well,” Alevy said in a cooler tone, “I want you to think now about Ace.”
“I have. So I had him meet me in Dzerzhinsky Square. And some K-goons came along, and Ace went pale. Hard to fake skin color.”
Alevy shrugged. “Heard of a similar situation where a guy did fake it with some sort of nitrate substance. Turned him ashen. But Dzerzhinsky Square was an inspired idea. Not bad for a military guy. A little risky though.”
Hollis sipped his beer.
Alevy said, “Regarding Ace, if you cut him loose, we’re ahead of the game whether he’s real or not. If you stay with him, you may find out what he’s up to. But what he’s up to may be murder, and it may be too late.”
“Actually there’s been a new development.”
“What?”
“He wants to head West.”
“Does he?”
“So he says.”
Alevy thought a moment. “Then maybe what he wants is to find out how we get people out of here.”
“Maybe. Maybe he just really wants to defect.” Hollis cradled the beer bottle in his hands and watched the condensation drip. Alevy had a weak spot in his professional makeup: He personally didn’t like most Russians. Not liking the Soviet regime was a job qualification. But Alevy was unable to concede that anyone who had been shaped by the regime was capable of anything but treachery and vileness. Perhaps he was right. Certainly General Surikov was a good example of the New Soviet Man. “I don’t intend to cut him loose or to turn him over to you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I’m not suggesting that. He apparently wants to deal with a brother Air Force officer. I couldn’t run him. What’s he offering for the ticket West? The scoop on Borodino?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you planted that in his head. Maybe he’ll make up a crock of shit just to get out of here.”
“We’ll soon know.”
“Are you meeting with him in person again?”
“Yes.” Hollis put his beer bottle on the floor and wiped his hands on his trousers. “But I don’t want company.”
“I want to talk to this joker myself.”
Hollis said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for the CIA station chief, the most important man in Western intelligence in the Soviet Union, to run around Moscow trying to rendezvous with Russian informers. Do you?”
“Let me worry about my job description.”
“Sure.” Hollis considered what little else he knew about Alevy. In Langley, he’d turned out to be a genius at political analysis, and his prophesies regarding Soviet intentions, particularly Gorbachev’s glasnost, had been so accurate that it seemed, some said, he had a friend in the Politboro. Alevy had arrived in Moscow about three years before as third deputy to the CIA station chief. Now he was the station chief. He was not allowed to leave the embassy compound without at least two security men and one cyanide pill. Hollis knew he left without the former but was sure he never left without the latter.
Alevy’s official job with the diplomatic mission was that of political affairs officer, but the cover was thin, as it usually was with this sort of thing. The KGB knew who he was, and so did most of the senior American staff. “Maybe that is Ace’s scam,” Hollis said baitingly. “To draw you out so they can kill you.”
“Even they don’t kill senior American diplomats.”
“In your case they’d make an exception. Anyway, you’re not a diplomat.”
“I am. I have a diplomatic passport. I go to all the receptions and talk like a diplomatic dork.”
Hollis stood. “What were you doing in Sadovniki Friday night?”
Alevy stood also. “A Sukkot party. The harvest festival. Sort of like Thanksgiving.”
Hollis nodded. He had
Alevy asked, “Do you know anything about Judaism?”
“I know the Soviets aren’t too keen on it. I know that religious observances can attract the K-goons. I know the ambassador would not like you annoying our host government.”
“Fuck his excellency.” Alevy added, “Jews are politically unreliable here, so you can fraternize with them.”
Hollis considered the irony in this. American Jews were once thought politically unreliable by the CIA. Now Alevy was the CIA Moscow station chief partly because he was a Jew. Times change.
As though Alevy had read Hollis’ mind, Alevy said, “Jewish dissidents are our potential fifth column here, Sam. We should build more bridges to that community.”
“Should we?” But beyond all that, Hollis thought, Alevy was playing a dangerous game, dangerous because it had become a personal game with no official backing or backup. Someday Seth Alevy would find himself alone with his cyanide pill. Hollis found himself saying something he’d thought about in Pavel’s izba. “Those people have enough problems, Seth. They don’t need you hanging around making things worse.”
“Bullshit. Things get worse for Jews only when they try to accommodate their persecutors.”
“Maybe. Look, I don’t talk politics or religion—only sex and football. I’m just telling you as a colleague, and yes, you idiot, even as your friend, that the KGB will forgive your spying, but not your Judaism. We need you here, especially now, until this new thing is settled.”
Alevy did not acknowledge Hollis’ words at all, but asked, “So, where and when are you meeting Ace?”
Hollis knew he couldn’t very well refuse to answer. “Gogol’s grave. Next Sunday. Three P.M. Give or take a few hours.”
“Where is Gogol’s grave these days?”
“Beats me.”
As Alevy and Hollis walked toward the exit, Hollis noticed that the Marines, the three secretaries, and the nurse had joined forces and retired to the lounge. The Horgans must have left without his noticing. The lanes were empty and quiet. And so were the game rooms and the swimming pool and all the other activity centers in the compound except the bars. There was a sort of mass lethargy that gripped this place, especially with the onset of winter. Hollis had never seen this kind of aimlessness and listlessness in any other American embassy. He didn’t know what a behavioral psychologist would make of this maze and its white rats, but Hollis’ theory was that the people inside the walls had somehow absorbed the malaise of the people outside the walls.
Hollis stared at the exit sign above the elevator and a word came to mind: bezizkhodnost. Exitlessness; dead end; futility; hopelessness; going nowhere—all contained within that one expressive word that the Russian people used but Pravda never printed. “Bezizkhodnost.”
Alevy looked at him and seemed to understand. “That’s what’s left when you subtract God from man.”
“But I see it here too. I think it’s catching.”
“Maybe,” Alevy said, “but not for us. We know what we’re about, don’t we, Sam?”
“Indeed we do.”
“Fuck the Reds,” Alevy said.
“Each and every day,” Hollis replied, but at the same time thinking that was no longer enough. Thinking that this time he had a chance to do something positive, to put Haiphong harbor to rest in his own mind, and to put the whole MIA question to rest for his country.
The two elevators came simultaneously. Hollis got in one, and Alevy the other.
16
Lisa Rhodes picked up the telephone in her office, dialed Hollis’ office, then before it rang, hung up. “Damn him.” She dialed Alevy’s office, and his secretary put her through. Alevy said, “Hello, Li—”
“Did you tell Sam Hollis to stay away from me?”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No. But to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get invol—”
“Don’t fuck around with my life, Seth.”
“Just calm down.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. Sorry.”
“Look, if he’s done a disappearing act on you… Anyway, I still love you. Why don’t we talk—”
“We talked.”
“I should really be angry. What happened out there in that village?”
“It’s in my report.”
“Lisa—”
“I have to go. Bye, Seth.” She hung up. “Damn men.”
Lisa looked at her watch, saw it was five P.M., and poured herself a bourbon. She pulled a press release toward her and worked on it without knowing what she was writing.
A few minutes later Kay Hoffman walked in and took her favorite seat on the hot-air register. “Ah. You ever try this?”
Lisa didn’t reply and went back to the press release.
Kay Hoffman picked up a just-arrived copy of the previous day’s Washington Post and scanned it, then glanced at Lisa. “You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Monthly blues?”
“No.” Lisa struck out a line of the typed copy. She reflected on her job in the United States Information Service. She wrote news releases, but she was also the resident Russophile, responsible for cultural affairs. She arranged for Soviet cultural missions to tour the States. They sent the Bolshoi, and the U.S. sent Van Halen.
Lisa Rhodes loved Russian poetry in its original language, and Pasternak moved her deeply. She was an expert on icons, enjoyed Russian ballet, traditional Russian cooking, and folk art. She thought she understood the mysticism in the Russian soul—the unsevered link between the Russian race, the land, and the Orthodox church. And since Yablonya, she thought she felt her own Russianness more.
She sometimes thought of herself as a thin rope bridge between two iron superstructures. But if the Americans and Soviets were determined not to understand each other, that was their problem. One day they’d blow themselves and the rest of the earth into oblivion. Then the two cultures would be similar.
She made a few more notes on her press release. She usually wrote two releases—one for America, one in Russian for the Soviet news service, Tass. Tass used what they wanted without attribution. In that respect, at least, the Soviet and American press were alike. She looked up at Kay. “Do I have to be nice to Van Halen or to the audience?”
Kay glanced up from her newspaper. “Oh… are you still working on that? That has to go out today. Just sound up.”
“Where do you get your orders from?”
“I don’t get orders, Lisa. Only direction.”
“From where?”
“High up.”
“Someday I’m going to write what I want. What I really saw here.”
“Some day you can. But today you write what you’re told.”
“That’s what some apparatchik is being told at the Tass office tonight.”
“Maybe. But we won’t shoot you if you don’t do what we say. So don’t tell me we are no different from them.”
“No, I meant… there’s more to the story. The whole idea of the Russian youth enthralled by Western pop culture. Every kid there was dressed in blue jeans. They were shouting in English, ‘Super,’ ‘Beautiful, baby.’ It was…” She thought a moment. “It was surreal is what it was. But was it revolution?”
Kay Hoffman stared at her awhile, then said, “If it was, that is not what you will write about.”
Lisa went back to her press release.
Kay went back to her newspaper.
Lisa thought, But what was
At the moment, Soviet-American relations were on the verge of a breakthrough. Thus all this cultural activity was a precursor to the diplomatic activity. Her orders—her directions—were to be positive, upbeat. Think peace.
Those had been her orders some years back, before Nicholas Daniloff, an American correspondent, had been arrested by the KGB on a trumped-up spy charge. Then new orders came down: cancel all cultural exchanges. And so it went, in an Orwellian about-face, in mid-sentence, the word processors ceased churning out puff pieces and began issuing terse sentences of canceled events. But for the moment, puff was required. Though now there was the Fisher affair. She said to Kay Hoffman, “I don’t appreciate you writing that press release about Fisher’s death and you putting my name on it.”
Kay shrugged. “Sorry. Orders.” She asked, “What did happen to that Fisher boy?”
“Exactly what you said in my press release.”
“I guess I deserved that.”
“Maybe I should resign over that.”
Kay stayed silent, then said, “I don’t think you need bother.”
“Meaning what?”
“Forget it.”
Lisa finished her cigarette and lit another. Her tour of duty was four years. She had less than two to go. As a Foreign Service Officer, she was assigned overseas duty somewhat as a military officer was. In fact, her rank of FSO-6 was roughly equivalent to an Army captain. Her title was Deputy Public Affairs Officer. Kay Hoffman was the PAO. They had six FSPs—five women and one man—working for them. It was all very exciting, very boring; very easy, very trying.
Kay looked up from her newspaper. “Are you all right?”
“No one is all right here,” Lisa replied. “This is what State calls a hardship tour. Do you think the Soviet government is insulted by that?”
Kay smiled grimly. “They don’t give a damn. This whole fucking country is on a lifetime hardship tour, and the government put them there.” Kay added, “It helps if you have a lover.”